MY MISTAKES BIGGEST

If you have read any of my previous articles you will see that this one doesn’t start off like the others

There’s no eager Lab bringing back ducks and no rain slashing down my neck. There’s not even a mob of ducks or geese back-pedalling over the decoys.

I had actually planned on writing about the first week of my duck hunting adventures for the 2020 season. I hunt from the very bottom of the province on big water to near the top of it on grain hunts and everywhere in between and I thought that would make great reading. There is a huge number of birds in the south this year due to the wet weather we experienced over spring and early summer, which was perfect for rearing ducklings. I’d observed a staggering number of ducks around, often in areas that would be classed as less than ducky locations.

I’d decided to call my article ‘The Relentless Pursuit of the Wily Mallard’. I had envisioned numerous big piles of dead ducks in various locations. The ducks were photographed, plucked, cleaned and in the freezer well before the trigger had been pulled and the season had even started.

The ink had only just dried on the